Trish is a true ‘multimedia’ artist, whose digital practice is concerned with communicating and representing aspects of ecosystem distress. For Trish, the medium is less important than the message. She therefore approaches her practice through the digital means that are deemed most important or relevant to the message she is communicating.
Currently, Trish works mostly with sound and lens-based media. In the past she has worked with graphic design, typography, acrylic painting, physical computing and animation.
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Sound art
Trish has a background in music, as a classically trained musician on the piano and saxophone, and with a postgraduate qualification in music technology. Recently, she has returned to exploring her core theme of the environment, by using sonic methods.
The Miracle of the One Thing (2018)
The Miracle of the One Thing is an ecological sound art project that recorded the underwater sounds of the river Shannon over a calendar year. The theme of this project centred around alienation from nature, and used ideas of praxis to overcome alienation. While designed as a spatial audio installation, individual tracks can be listened to below. The work is due for its premiere performance in April 2019.
January
The year opens up with a mix of sounds from the air and the water.
February
The piece opens with background rain sounds, some ‘purring’ type sounds close to the hydrophone and various other low-level underwater sounds.
March
March is largely punctuated by sounds of the water itself, the piece recorded at a relatively shallow lake shore.
April
April commences with some water sounds, the recordings having taken place in a marina for small boats.
May
The month of May is characterised by a dramatic upsurge in marine activity.
June
June commences with the sounds of the marine life foraging and eating material close to the hydrophones.
July
July opens with the sounds of the water. This recording was taken in deep water, with the hydrophones suspended in the river.
August
In contrast to the July sounds punctuated by rain, the August sounds reveal once more an underwater setting where unidentified creatures forage, make popping sounds, and even a low cat-like noise.
September
The September sounds were conducted in conditions of some wind.
October
October opens with a creature foraging close to the hydrophones.
November
A rain storm introduces the November recording. An intensity of activity close to the hydrophones is also heard.
December
The December recording was recorded in shallow water, revealing sounds of the river interspersed with some isolated creatures both sounding and moving close to the hydrophones.
Photography
Trish’s photography work often encompasses themes from topophilia, biophilia and solastalgia. Sometimes the work is just humourous.
The word topophilia comes from the Greek words topos, meaning “place” and -philia, meaning “love of”. It is therefore a love of a particular place. Trish’s work sometimes aims to communicate the love of small, anonymous, rural locations in Ireland through digital photography.
Also to be seen in Trish’s work is the chronicling of biophilia, broadly meaning a love of living things. In her work, Trish attempts to evoke a connection with the wildlife of small, even insignificant places.
Solastalgia is a neologism describing the sadness or upset felt in relation to ecosystem distress. Trish’s work attempts to visually communicate the feeling of solastalgia. For more on the concept of solastalgia, see this article.
At The Still Point
Taken from a line in T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, this project is a homage to water. Eliot’s masterpiece has long inspired me since I was a young teenager. A frenetic world made silent, yet, when stillness approaches, ‘there the dance is’.
Solastalgia
As part of an ongoing enquiry, this project interrogates the concept of solastalgia. Solastalgia is a neologism describing the sadness, grief or loss felt in relation to ecosystem distress. This work attempts to visually communicate the feeling of solastalgia using photography.
Calder Valley
Sometimes a project takes on a documentary tone, and while I was travelling in the UK for a conference, I got to explore the Calder Valley in Yorkshire, Ted Hughes country.
Waterways
An ongoing theme of my work concerns the tension between first and second nature, that is the natural and built environment. This tension is within – I am the product of an urban environment.
Beltra Show
A rural celebration of nature and nurture. The Beltra Show gathers together those who tend fruit and vegetables, who bake perfect apple tarts, and who arrange flowers in their colourful glory.
What speaks to the soul, escapes our measurements
Alexander von Humboldt, cartographer, adventurer, naturalist, renaissance man is the inspiration for the title of this collection. This collection is a sort of ‘artist’s choice’ of various works of nature photography.
Animation
Trish teaches both stop-frame and digital animation. This also feeds into her Going Green Digitally funded research project where she was able to co-produce digital animations with her colleague Dónal Mulligan.
Below are two of the animations from the project. Please see oneplanet.ie for the project website.
The Problem
Ways of Thinking
Digital game development
Someone Elses Shoes (2008 – 2010) was a ‘serious’ game, created by members of the School of Communications, aimed at 11-15 year olds. It aims to educate students about the causes and effects of migration and to explore intercultural relations between people in their wider social and political contexts. It also aims to develop users’ critical media literacy skills. Trish worked as photographer, digital designer, print production designer and audio lead on the project. Watch the showreel: